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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JimAde" data-source="post: 2710174" data-attributes="member: 16739">Caspar Hauser IntroCaspar Hauser kneeled on the smooth floor, his forehead resting against the cool tiles and his hands bound behind him.  Blood and sweat ran down his face and he felt the inside of his mouth gingerly with his tongue, tasting the place where his front teeth used to be.  He slowly straightened his back and brought his weight down on his feet.  He squinted up into the icy blue eyes of his erstwhile liege lord, Etienne Valmont Baron Ravenswood.  Caspar said nothing.  It had all been said already.  Valmont had accused him of treason, and Caspar couldn't really deny it.  He had willfully disobeyed his lord and sought a means to kill the baron.  The fact that he had done this on learning that Valmont's meteoric rise to power was fueled by murder, betrayal and pacts with dark forces was not relevant.Valmont made a fluid gesture to someone behind Caspar and powerful hands gripped his shoulders.  He was dragged to his feet and pushed onto a plush white divan, which slid back a bit as Caspar's weight struck it.  He left a bloody, smeared imprint of his face on the luxurious white fabric.  Valmont sipped his wine and regarded Caspar coolly.  "You are not without talent, Caspar," he said evenly, as if they were simply taking tea together.  "But as usual you are far more impressed with yourself than you ought to be."  He set his wine down on the white desk and flicked an imaginary bit of lint from his white silk shirt.  Caspar had trouble reconciling Valmont's punctilious habits with the half-decayed, undead horror that had just pushed him onto the couch.  He adjusted his position to get a little less uncomfortable and said blurrily, "I would have had you if it hadn't been for Miriel."Valmont smirked and said, "Believe what you want. It no longer matters.  Though you have betrayed me, Caspar, at least you will still be able to serve our mutual lord."  Caspar spit a mouthful of blood on the polished floor, taking a bit of satisfaction is Valmont's pained reaction.  "He may be your lord," Caspar said, "but not mine."  Valmont smiled again and said, "He will be lord of all before long.  Time for the first step.  He opened a drawer of the desk and withdrew a slim book bound in white leather.  While he searched it for something he said to the zombie, "put the divan in the middle of the room.  I'll never get those blood stains out of it anyway."  The zombie shuffled forward to comply and effortlessly dragged the couch and Caspar into the center of the large, white-tiled room.Valmont reached into the desk again and withdrew a gleaming dagger.  "Ah, here it is," he said brightly.  He came around the desk and Caspar tried to rise, but the zombie was behind him again and pushed him down to the seat.  The thing's stinking hands were like iron on his shoulders.  Pain and exhaustion finally got the better of Caspar and he looked at the dagger without much in the way of fear, as if he were dreaming.  Valmont began intoning words Caspar could not understand and the air took on a greasy, unstable feeling.  Caspar's hair stirred where it wasn't matted down with blood and under the stench of the zombie he thought he smelled something like rancid butter.  Valmont now stood before him, reading from the book and raising the dagger slowly, obviously trying to time something correctly.Suddenly the door to Valmont's study burst open and Caspar's dreaming fugue was broken.  He looked toward the door and saw a tall, gaunt man in a great black cloak standing in the doorway.  In one hand he bore a cutlass and the other was smoking, as were the remains of the door which lay scattered about.  He looked at Valmont and said nothing, but his eyes glowed darkly.  Valmont's voice faltered and he said in a very small voice, "Remarkably bad timing."The newcomer held his arms forward and a great wind suddenly sprang up.  The zombie burst into flame and vanished in an instant, while Valmont was thrown back over his desk, but the greasy feeling in the air persisted.  It seemed to be striving against the wind and Caspar felt an odd pressure building in his skull.  He tried again to rise but suddenly there was no floor to stand on.  He and the divan and the book were all falling, but with a strange slowness, through a long shaft.  No, not a shaft, he was outdoors, surrounded by impossibly tall buildings and drifting toward the ground far below.OOC: I'm assuming that Caspar has since had healing to fix him up and repair his teeth. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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